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Does the quality of a Southern Gospel concert affect the amount you put in the love offering? Do you give more if you thought the group was really good, and less if you thought it was a lousy performance? Or do you always give a set amount?

Since my posting over the Thanksgiving holiday will be light, I thought I’d start this open thread to carry discussion forward until next Monday.

Here is a question to get things started. The current subtitle for this blog is “Beyond the Headlines: Southern Gospel News and Analysis.”  For most of a year, I’ve been wondering if that was the best possible subtitle. Any suggestions?

As always, since this is an open thread, feel free to comment on other topics as well!

Since a friend suggested this, and since I’ll be out for the day at another seminar, I decided to start an open thread posing this question: Is it wrong for one group to borrow another group’s arrangement of a song without giving credit or paying royalties?

Does it make any difference if the group has retired (even if their arrangements are still under copyright)?

Does it make any difference if the two groups had the same producer, and it was the producer’s call?

A recent thread on the Dove Brothers got sidetracked by a political discussion. This topic deserves its own thread.

What role should politics play in Southern Gospel?

Do the political inclinations of a musician influence your view of his music?

I have a busy weekend coming up, with doing a seminar on the Faith of America’s Presidents and catching the final stop in Signature Sound’s summer tour just for starters. Since, like Adam Edwards, I too have quite a few things to catch up on before heading off to NQC Thursday morning, I will take a few days hiatus from the blog, at least unless some news story jumps out and demands to be told.

It’s been announced that next Thursday, the various Southern Gospel bloggers will be meeting for a conference at NQC. We’ll be discussing the role blogs should play in Southern Gospel music. Of course, we’ll be looking at it from our perspective as blog owners. But what do you, the readers, think?

Should a blog be consistently upbeat, and ignore personal scandals?

Should a blogger look for little errors, personal and professional, in the Southern Gospel world, and focus on them?

Or should a blog strike some sort of middle ground?

With my speaking schedule picking up over the next few months–not a bad thing–my Saturdays are getting steadily busier. To help ease my load, I’m thinking of introducing the “open thread” as a new weekly feature.

Here’s the idea: I start an open thread each Saturday and throw out an introductory question to get the discussion started each weekend. But you take it from there; switch topics and discuss any Southern Gospel topic you like as soon as you feel like it (provided it’s not libel or a nasty personal attack). This won’t always be in place of a Saturday post. Whenever I have a good idea for a Saturday post, I’ll post that, too. But having this here each weekend will let me take the weekends off when I need to.

Giving credit where credit is due, Averyfineline’s success with the idea sparked the thought that I might give this a try.

So, with all of that in mind, here’s a question to get us started:

Should I implement this idea?